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Ask HN: What tech were you convinced would take the world by storm but didn't?

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Re: Ask HN: What tech were you convinced would take the world by storm but didn't?

#711
post #149

3D printing. Turns out making little plastic shapes isn't all that useful. Seems obvious in hindsight.

I believe the problem is the sort of plastic used. You need structural strength in most things and filament pieces melted together is just not cutting it.

I thought the point was you just use the plastic as a mold for something else

Re: Ask HN: What tech were you convinced would take the world by storm but didn't?

#712
post #527

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I, personally, felt that Audiogalaxy was the hallmark program from this era. It was the most surefire way to get the songs you were looking for and discover plenty more in the process. You'd set the music folder you wanted to share (there was no opting out) and so long as you had the program open your files were available for download by other users. The program operated like an always on satellite torrent program wi…

Soulseek is still alive with the same system. The program does not make you share anything but users can disable sharing files with users who don't share files. At least in 2012-14 Soulseek was very popular with extremely niche and obscure music fans (stuff not even on What.cd!). Not sure how it is now.

Yes strange that soulseek seems to have been the one that has lasted longest. Probably its just flown under the radar and hence not been targeted legally or otherwise like Napster Kazaa Limewire Edonkey etc . I dont think its in any particular way more technologically advanced.

In any case today YouTube is now surely the biggest repository of illegally shared music by some distance yet seems accepted in general by the recording industry.

Re: Ask HN: What tech were you convinced would take the world by storm but didn't?

#713
post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It had everything to do with recording. People wouldn’t mind people flaunting weird gadgetry, but the feeling of being recorded was too creepy. It didn’t help that a lot of early adopters were very creepy to start with. It could have revolutionised journalism, and I still think we will eventually get something like it once the tech is really invisible, but the social aspect will take ages to sort out.

Robert Scoble in that Glass shower pic. You can spot the exact moment all the hype died, in that one post. https://plus.google.com/+Scobleizer/posts/TcaqNeYJWXo

Considering what came out later about Scoble...

Re: Ask HN: What tech were you convinced would take the world by storm but didn't?

#715
post #579
post #543

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, obviously I'm not going to be linking to a video showing a technology that doesn't exist yet. The video serves to demonstrate that given some technological development the entire screen could be like that, and aside from that there are E-Ink screens in common use that can't refresh even such a small area that fast.

A technical video about eink, reprogramming the firmware etc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsbiO8EAsGw

It's unfortunate that so much of this specific content is locked up as video. The part is $35 shipped on AliExpress, a great way to begin experimenting.

Re: Ask HN: What tech were you convinced would take the world by storm but didn't?

#716
post #498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a Norwegian startup that has decreased the latency dramatically. https://remarkable.com/ https://youtu.be/zpUPpiV7gAo

I have one. Really is remarkable. No meaningful latency while writing unless you draw fast large figures while watching for lag. Upsides: Feels like pencil on paper. With iPad Pro I keep going back to paper. With this... it’s paper. Downsides: Mobile software clunky, doesn’t connect to all WiFi, hardware paging buttons should not have been on bottom.

I have one too. I love it.

I was blown away when I was able to write some technical specifications in emacs, render them to PDF and share them to the device, then go for a coffee and review my work. I can markup my documents, sync them back to my machine, etc.

I do wish the resolutions of the documents on my desktop were better. I've drafted presentations on the device while thinking. I vastly prefer paper for thinking. This device is perfect for that.

I just wish I could do more with it. I want to be able to hook up a cloud service to interpret my math hand-writing, run it on my theorem prover or checker, and return the results, etc.... much like what people were doing in Xerox Parc ages ago.

There's so much potential here.

Re: Ask HN: What tech were you convinced would take the world by storm but didn't?

#718

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm out of date. Does E-ink still have ~500ms latency of refreshing the screen? If so, that's the #1 reason I believed it wouldn't be successful when I used them 6 years ago.

But they're still amazing for status displays, e-readers and stuff that don't need low latencies. What's keeping them from being more popular is the price, anything over a 1" e-ink display costs a literal arm and a leg.

Not sure how specific you're trying to be - here's a specific example of 4.2" at $35. I actually would be interested to see a graph of cost-per-square-inch to see where the arms and legs actually do come into play.

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/400x300-4-2inch-E-Ink-displa...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15721766

Re: Ask HN: What tech were you convinced would take the world by storm but didn't?

#719

X3D - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X3D Rationale: It was the 1990s, VRML flew but didn't quite make it. 3D hardware acceleration had arrived, gaming was exploding, Descent and Quake had proven complex worlds and freedom of movement were possible on commodity hardware, and talk of buffering 3D content in video streams seemed to make perfect sense for next generation passive entertainment. Product placements, architect…

What killed IMO and what will continue to kill these kinds of things for a long time is that nearly all 3D applications need massive amounts of custom optimization solutions. Stuff like X3D gets you a few cubes on the screen. Then you want to do GTA or Google Maps or Minecraft or pick your app and suddenly your generic scene graph just isn't good enough.

Re: Ask HN: What tech were you convinced would take the world by storm but didn't?

#720
3D Sports. 2005, in Austin one local theater showed the National Championship in 3D. To this day this was the best football viewing experience I've come across. During the game, I could see the holes open for running backs as they opened and later closed in a split second. I felt like I was actually on the field as a player as the game played out. At half time, everyone gathered in the lobby of the theater and there was just this feeling that this was the future of watching sports in talking to other people.

I was convinced at that time that 3D would eventually be the way that everyone watched sports and that this would eventually top the in game experience. I'm still surprised that theaters and sports networks haven't partnered to display more sporting events in this fashion.

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